Modern general-purpose computing systems present a variety of challenges for data loss prevention. It can be difficult to limit the exposure of certain types of data when hundreds of different applications may be available for use on a particular system, each one a potential vector for data loss.
Printing is one avenue by which sensitive data may be extracted from a system. A conventional method to prevent sensitive data printing is to monitor each application to determine if it initiates a printing process. However, this potentially requires a hook into each application and can be thwarted if any single application is missed by the monitoring.
A loss prevention agent can avoid the problem of having to monitor hundreds of applications if, instead, it can monitor a print management system While such central monitoring methods are known for the WINDOWS operating system, no such monitoring system has previously been developed for a Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) used by MAC OS X and various Linux platforms.
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that significant problems and shortcomings associated with traditional print monitoring methods may be alleviated in some circumstances by a method for monitoring a CUPS printing system.